Monday, October 13, 2008

Put that credit card away...

If you haven't noticed...the advertisements for home decorating and home improvements have ramped up over the past couple of weeks. In fact, Pottery Barn has already started their endless e-mail campaign to pressure me into buying everything I need to make the holidays perfect. I honestly get a warm (and sometimes fuzzy) feeling when I look at their beautiful pictures of staged homes and think...

Ohhhh, if only I had those dishes/napkins/place mats/candles/gourds/place cards then my children will have a perfect Thanksgiving. Then when they get older they will bring all of their friends home from college because I always provided the most amazing linens and perfect turkey and stuffing. Then when they get married they will always choose our house instead of their in-laws for Thanksgiving. In fact the in-laws will feel so inferior to my autumn themed finger-tip bathroom towels that they will crumble under the pressure and join us too. As long as they do not bring their Jell-O salad.

But then I snap out of it and remember my Thanksgivings as a child...Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, the smell of my mom's broccoli and rice casserole, and the delicious pies that my Nanny whipped up without a single recipe. Sure there are some not-so-happy memories associated with Thanksgiving, but I think that it is because I had some mean cousins and used to have unrealistic expectations of this one day.

Now I know. I will try to let go of those expectations. My life is not a catalogue and I will not give into the pressure to charge NeedLess things. My children won't recall if the house was in perfect autumn attire, but they will remember that we enjoyed the day, thanked God for our blessings and shared food and fun times with our friends and family.

I have to admit it though...I really, really want to play flag football someday.

By the way...I am working on getting some fun Thanksgiving stuff together. But right now I am working on no-sew, last minute Halloween Costumes for under $10. That will be posted soon. Yeah!

1 comment:

Drew is going to be a traffic cone. That I will be making myself. No sew, thanks to felt and foam core and hot glue. So far I've spent $10, and I need to buy the fabric. But that's WAY better than the $50, way-too-hot-for-Halloween-in-Texas, super-cute costumes in the PB Kids catalog.